The first of the zinnias come out and they smile at me through the window as I wash dishes, greet me as I pass them on the mower. Such happy-looking flowers, delighting me each summer with their reseeding, with their haphazard arrangement, with their roundness and brightness and flower-ness.

The days are full, varied, the same, not the same. Beginning with tea and journal, candlelight and potted cyclamen, a deliciously quiet house. Ending with a book in bed, with a kiss goodnight, with eyelids closing in release. In between there are work projects and paychecks, food shopping and meal making, tending to home and tending to hearts. There are shifting rhythms as my son goes off to work, as my daughter prepares to go off to college. There is newness and sameness, nothing is forever.

I fall down rabbit holes, rise and return to the path, there is so much that entices and excites, distracts. Again and again, I gather the edges gently, allow for some ruffling while also tucking loose ends in. I am stitching a garment whose form I cannot quite see but whose comfort, whose right-ness, whose me-ness I can almost taste – bitter and sweet, savory; complex and layered, delicious. 

I look to the zinnias, grateful for their summery presence, their roundness, brightness, flower-ness. I wonder at my own reseeding, my haphazard arrangement of dreams and tasks, my diverted attentions and steady heart. Something is coming together, new and the same, reshuffling, reseeding. And though I know the truth of already being whole, know the truth of already being together, I am coming together in a different way. Different and new and the same, nothing forever; complex and layered, delicious.

The flower doesn't dream of a bee. It blossoms and the bee comes.
~ Mark Nepo ~